Russell Crowe Challenges Writer to Bike Contest

Courtesy of Splashnews.com

It's a duel!

Russell Crowe hasn't always been gracious with the media. In the past, he's berated producers and thrown telephones at anyone who's pissed him off. But now we may be seeing a new gladiator. After a gossip columnist recently mocked his diet and workout habits, the Aussie actor didn't flip. Instead he challenged her to a race.

Annette Sharp of Sydney's The Daily Telegraph wrote an article earlier this week that poked fun at Crowe after he was spotted supplementing his weekly workout routine with cigarettes and tacos.

But the 45 year-old actor, who is supposed to be training for his role in the upcoming Robin Hood, caught wind of the article and decided to challenge the columnist to a bike-off.

"Get on your bike," his spokesman told her. "Russell wants you to go riding with him. Are you ready to die?"

So she accepted, and pretty soon found that Crowe was more in shape than all those tacos and smokes implied. "When you make a living throwing stones," she said afterwards, "you expect that one day someone is going to lob one back. This was that day."

Crowe led her through the streets of Sydney, up hills and around bends, and she ended up with more than an appreciation for his fitness and endurance. The actor even displayed some of that rare gentleness as he tended to her scraped knee when she fell from her bike.

But of course, when it was all said and done, he had to have the last jab"

"[Director] Baz Lurhmann holds the record for being the worst cycling tourist we've ever taken for a ride," he said. "You are twice the man Baz is…on a bicycle. I don't know how you'd be on a film set."

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